According to the ministry organization, “Feed My Starving Children”, it only costs about a year to save the life of a starving child. And, based on their statistics, between five and six million children die from starvation each year throughout the world.

In the midst of these sobering numbers, we find the appalling truth regarding the finances of the Christian Church in America. According to statistics from “The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches” and “The National Center for Charitable Statistics”, Christian churches and ministries in America have a total annual income from donations of approximately .

How are American churches and ministries spending their massive income? They have acquired hard assets of prime real estate and luxurious buildings totaling in the hundreds of billions of dollars. They frequently are paying their ministers six-figure salaries, and in some cases seven figures. Their elaborate mega churches are filled with expensive and luxurious furnishings and state-of-the-art equipment. Some preachers fly to their meetings in their own personal private jets costing millions of dollars each. By comparison, the actual amount spent on “true ministry” to people in need is only a minute percentage of their total income.

If America’s Christian churches and ministries gave only ten percent of their total annual income to save starving children throughout the world, and to house America’s homeless population, every starving child worldwide could be fed three meals a day throughout the year; moreover, within just two years, 4000 new homeless shelters could be built across America with the capacity to house every homeless person in our nation. Now I ask you, what would Jesus do? He said that the true test of discipleship is whether we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and minister in general to those in need (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus values starving children and homeless people more than expensive buildings and “fat-cat” salaries.

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America’s selfish and materialistic churches try to justify their lavish, self-pampering expenditures by comparing each of their church buildings to the luxurious temple in Old Testament Israel. However, their comparison is both unbiblical and dishonest. There was only in all of Israel, and only the priests could enter it. It was not a place where the people “went to church” each week. On the other hand, there were numerous synagogues throughout Israel where the people attended on a weekly basis. These synagogues were quite “commonplace”, and were not expensive and luxurious structures. They would be the equivalent of our churches today, and the temple. Furthermore, the temple housed the “Shekinah Glory”, “Ark of the Covenant”, mercy seat and the Ten Commandments written by God Himself on tablets of stone. To compare our churches in America to the temple is both dishonest and ridiculous. As previously mentioned, there was only one temple in all of Israel. However, America’s selfish and worldly churches are building thousands of “temples” throughout our nation, while the commonplace synagogues/churches are vanishing from our landscape.

The truth of the matter is that contemporary churches do really want to be “like” the temple. They just want to compare themselves to the temple in “one aspect”. They only use this comparison when it comes to justifying their luxurious and expensive buildings. They don’t want to actually “operate” like the temple. What do I mean? If today’s mega churches want to “truly” compare themselves to the temple, the first thing they must do is close down all of their coffee shops, arcade rooms, restaurants and bookstores. Why? Jesus cast the “moneychangers” and those who bought and sold merchandise out of the temple, and He said that we are not to make His Father’s house into a “house of merchandise” (Matthew 21:12; John 2:16). However, don’t expect to see America’s mega churches close down their profitable business enterprises that they operate in their “temples”. You see, they only want to compare themselves to the temple when it comes to the enormous expense and luxury of their mega churches, not when it comes to operating them in a similar manner regarding sanctity and reverence.

Christian ministers and their congregations are fully aware that millions of children die from starvation every year. Yet, they willfully allow these children to starve to death, and they consciously choose to spend their money on their ornate buildings and self-pampering furnishings and equipment instead. It is certainly a glaring contradiction that these same ministers and their parishioners will fight to save the life of unborn children, while they purposefully choose to allow millions of “already born” children to slowly and painfully die from starvation. I am also pro-life, but what is being done by Christian churches and ministries in America is unconscionable and mind boggling.

This clip is taken from the sermon “The Cost of Discipleship,”preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll at the Mars Hill Church Ballard campus in Seattle, Washington, on February 13, 2011. It is the 63rd sermon in our sermon series on the Gospel of Luke. To watch or download the full sermon, visit: www.marshillchurch.org
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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